Startuply.vc · May 2026
Profile of the startup, its SAR-to-optical product, and early funding/customer hypotheses.
Foundation models for 24/7 Earth Observation
Company research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 29, 2026
Overview
AxionOrbital Space is a San Francisco-based, YC W26 space-tech company building foundation models that convert Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) into optical-grade, analysis-ready Earth-observation imagery for continuous 24/7 visibility.
Primary product
ORION and Hubble: SAR-to-optical Earth-observation foundation models / persistent satellite intelligence platform
Founded
2025
Headquarters
95 3rd St, Spaces Mission & 3rd, San Francisco, California 94103, US
Team size
1-10
Work style
Remote
Industry
Space Research and Technology
Sub-industry
Earth observation / geospatial AI
Offices
95 3rd St, Spaces Mission & 3rd, San Francisco, California 94103, US
San Francisco, California, United States
Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
Business model
B2B
API
on-prem/edge deployment
Funding
People & investors
Leadership
Co-founder & CEO
Co-founder & CTO
Nirbhay Aggarwal
Founding Team Member / General Manager - India
Work & culture
Research-driven, physics-first, mission-critical, and iterative; the company emphasizes deterministic modeling, continuous deployment, and avoiding hallucinated imagery.
Work style
Remote
Product & market
Pricing
Hubble is positioned as free/open-weight; Orion is enterprise-priced, with deployment via API, private VPC/on-prem, and edge/on-orbit options.
Differentiators
- —Near-real-time SAR-to-optical conversion
- —24/7 all-weather visibility through clouds, smoke, and darkness
- —0.06-second inference latency
- —0.5 m high-resolution Orion model and 10 m Hubble model
- —Physics-constrained deterministic reconstruction to avoid hallucinations
- —Analyst-ready, GIS-native outputs
- —10+ year archive access
- —Open-weight entry model plus enterprise model
Technology
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
deterministic one-step diffusion
foundation models
computer vision
analysis-ready optical imagery
change detection
pattern-of-life analysis
object detection / classification
GeoJSON export
Shapefile export
GeoParquet export
cloud API
private VPC / on-prem deployment
edge / on-orbit processing
Hugging Face inference space
Customers
Defense and intelligence organizations
Commodity traders / hedge funds
Satellite data aggregators and analytics firms
SAR / optical satellite providers
Agriculture and climate-response users
Disaster-response / urban-planning users
Competitors
Descartes Labs
Albedo
Satim
ICEYE
FloodMapp
Scale & contact
Latest news
Signalbase · May 2026
Funding note saying AxionOrbital Space raised a $100K seed round for AI planetary-monitoring work.
Forbes · Mar 2026
Forbes covers the company's YC acceptance story and the founders' path from rejection to acceptance.
Y Combinator · Mar 2026
YC launch post describing ORION, the SAR-to-optical model, its 0.06-second latency, and enterprise deployment ask.
Y Combinator LinkedIn · Mar 2026
YC launch post for NeoEarth, a world model forecasting how the ground changes up to a month ahead.
Jobs and careers at AxionOrbital Space
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